HalfLife: Opposing Force: The Alternate Reality
by Truth-Seeking Cretin
Summary: Shepherd doesn't go to Black Mesa, he goes to England. Outnumbered and unarmed, he must solve the mystery of why he was sent to Hogwarts. Yes, there is a plot behind this crossover fic.
1. Welcome to Hogwarts

Author's notes: Firstly, I apologise for subjecting you to my imagination. If you survive, please review. Secondly, I don't own any of the characters, placenames, or concepts I freeloaded from to create this story, and this goes for ALL the chapters. Thirdly, this is my first post to FanFiction.net, so I hope it doesn't screw up in any way. Fourthly, this story is rated R for frequent use of four-letter words. If you care about the applicable laws which you might break, you'd be best off clicking the 'Back' button on your browser now. Fifthly, keep watch for the corresponding story I will soon write and post in the Harry Potter section of this site, which is the same story but told from Harry's point of view, which will clear up some of the questions this one leaves open as well as adding new narrative of Harry's experiences during this story. Sixthly, to place these pieces of fanfic in context, imagine that the Black Mesa incident never occurred and that this story occurs sometime in the middle of Harry Potter no. 5, except that Harry has already been told about Prof. Trelawney's prophecy. Haven't read HP no. 5 or played H-L:OF? Your loss! Go find out the plots from somebody.  
  
The corporal sitting in the cargo bay ('meat pack' being the army slang) of the military transport aircraft, callsign Goose 2, was just like any other corporal right at that moment. Being dragged off by his superiors without a clue where or why, to do some job when he got there. It didn't occur to him that the upcoming job would push him beyond the limits. He stared serenely out of the open side of the low-flying aircraft, getting a pretty nice view of a forest below and an identical aircraft some hundred metres out, callsign Goose 3.  
"So where the hell are we, anyway?" demanded a deep-voiced, assertive grunt.  
"Well, if we thought we were going to your mother's house, so far this all looks familiar!" the resident tactical engineer shouted back over the sound of the rotors. This was witty and made everyone laugh. That is, the first time it was said, some six months ago.  
"Yeah, that's real cute, Jack." the grunt answered back.  
"Anytime, anywhere!" Jack the redneck engineer cried back in glee.  
The radio crackled into life. The message which spouted from it was so unclear that the corporal doubted that even his superior officer, standing right next to the radio, could make it out. No one replied to whatever the message was.  
At this time the corporal still had no clue that within hours he would be forced to choose between the mission and his own conscience. Nor did he realise that this op would redefine 'Fubar'. And neither did he care, for he was busy patting his pockets for a light to his cig.  
"Do you smell that?" the assertive grunt piped up.  
"Smell what?" the redneck intoned nasally.  
"Smells like... smells like another babysittin' job to me, man." answered the grunt.  
Jack laughed, "No shit, man!"  
A virgin soldier shouted back from way down the line, "Babysitting job my ass! This job has training mission written all over it! Why else would they have kept our orders from us for so long?"  
"Yeah, what the hell's that all about?" the grunt boomed.  
"Do you have a problem, private?" the southern commander yelled back cuttingly. "I will give you your orders when we reach the LC!"  
The grunt was no idiot. He knew full well what the only thing he could say here without being punished was, and he said it: "Sir, yes sir!"  
The radio spoke. "Does anyone have a clear view of the LC yet?"  
"Copy that, Ghost Rider. Negative so far." came an answer on the radio.  
"I don't really care what we're going in for, as long as I get to kill me something." Jack announced.  
"I heard that!" cackled the virgin soldier, just about audible.  
Then Jack and the deep-voiced grunt began the twentieth of their bickering matches since they'd taken off from Iraq. But the corporal paid even less attention than usual. He rubbed his eyes and slapped himself. Unless he was mistaken, that was some kind of Pegasus flying alongside Goose 3. Except it was dead and rotting, too. The corporal was captivated by its ethereal, graceful yet revolting outline. Its hollow eyes were fixed on the plane's fuel cells. Madly, the flying horse put on an extra burst of speed and bit down into the fuel line. Fuel began spurting out of the wing, finely mixing with the air. Then the horse thing moved and bit down on the electricity cables. At once the horse thing was frazzled, the electricity being transferred to the body of the aircraft, then some sparks hit the fuel spray. The entire plane disappeared in a massive fireball. The commander stared at the fireball in wonder, then turned to the platoon and began issuing rapid-fire orders.  
"Oh shit! Goose 3's down, Goose 3's down!" shrieked some hysterical radio operator.  
"What the hell's going on up there?" Ghostrider screamed from the ground.  
The corporal did up all his clasps securely and loaded his weapons, paying no attention to his commanding officer. After all, so far his only combat experience had been with the Iraqis, and at no point during the war had the Iraqis been well equipped enough or ballsy enough to fire at a transport. Here some bizarre mythical creature had just selflessly killed a platoon of soldiers and itself, so he had a right to be scared. Plus he was pretty sure he was dreaming, in retrospect a few seconds later, and he felt no need to listen to a dream-commander's orders.  
Suddenly an explosion rocked the side of Goose 2, and the corporal saw out the window that they began to lose altitude. They weren't very high up, so he knew he'd have some chance of surviving, and held tight. The commander thought differently. He shouted, "God save me!" and hurled himself out of the aircraft.  
When the plane smashed through the canopy of the trees and impacted the forest floor, the corporal lost consciousness instantly.  
  
He regained consciousness less than a minute later, but to him it seemed like a nanosecond later. His eyes snapped open. Carnage met his eyes. Half a dozen of his fellow soldiers stood behind inadequate cover, firing dozens of rounds at an advancing troop of centaurs. The centaurs stepped over the bodies of their fallen and fired arrows at will. Jack leant around his tree and fired three times rapidly with his Desert Eagle weapon, knocking two centaurs backwards dead, and was then stuck in the throat with an arrow.  
The corporal blinked and automatically reached around his back for his M-16. It wasn't there. He stood up and looked around a panoramic area. In the little clearing their landing had created were ten soldiers firing at advancing hordes of centaurs. The plane itself was mangled beyond recognition, with about two dozen charred bodies in the inaccessible meat pack. The corporal reached for his backup weapon, a Desert Eagle. It was gone too. He scanned the floor for dropped weapons, and saw his personalised (i.e. graffitied) assault rifle lying near Jack. He charged towards it, dodging an arrow, when an explosion went off behind him and knocked him flying. He was unconscious again before he hit the ground.  
  
He became semi-conscious again. He felt himself being dragged over stone, and dropped onto his front. Painfully he craned his neck and forced himself to look up. The world was pretty hazy and blurry. He sensed that there were at least three other American soldiers in a small room with him. The door behind him was shut, and the door in front had been opened. He looked out into what seemed to be a courtyard inside a castle. A soldier ran down a path leading into the courtyard urgently.  
"Get down!" one of the soldiers next the corporal advised in a yell. There was a flash of green light and the soldier flopped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. The soldier next to the corporal cursed and ran out the door, assault rifle blazing. Then the darkness enveloped the corporal once again, and this time he didn't fight it. 


	2. Missing in Action

Gradually the corporal regained consciousness once again. He saw an ornate ceiling promoting hospitality. He realised he was lying down on a not-too-comfortable mattress. Hastily he sat up, expecting to feel woozy, but, magically, he was fine.  
"Oh! You're awake!" a woman called. The corporal's head snapped around, quickly taking in her appearance and his surroundings. She appeared to be harmless, and he seemed to be in a hospital ward. In the other beds were two other soldiers, clearly American and clearly dead from deep stab wounds, one fast-asleep seventeen-year-old woman wearing robes with blood soaking her hair, and what appeared to be a cactus.  
"Yes, I'm awake." he grumbled. "I got knocked out twice in that mission, I think I got a concussion. Where am I?"  
"You're at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." she said slowly.  
"Look, bitch, I'm not in the fucking mood for games." he snarled. "I just slept through the best combat experience of my life, so I'm in a pretty bad mood. Where am I?"  
"I assure you, corporal Shepherd - I looked at your dog tag - you are indeed in Hogwarts."  
"What kind of a shitty made-up-name is Hogwarts? There's no such thing as magic - " Shepherd began, about to launch into a rabid diatribe against delusional, ditzy nurses who couldn't keep their legs closed, but stopping suddenly as he remembered the undead Pegasus-thing and the horde of centaurs. "Wha-?" he wondered, thoughts exploding across his mind which such ferocity he was forced to sit down.  
"It's quite simple, really," she informed him. "Yes, magic does exist. You are a Muggle soldier of some kind. A Muggle is a non-magical person like yourself. I am a witch, a witch who specialises in magical medicine, so I'm the local nurse here at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Only the school is in a state of bedlam at the moment; it has been overrun by many soldiers of your type, and many magical creatures of every type. I do hope these two are the only fatalities." She stroked the hair of one of the dead men sadly.  
Over a span of several seconds Shepherd got over the shock of it all. Then he successfully integrated it into his current knowledge of the world and came back to life. "I've seen at least forty other fatalities." he informed her brutally. He paused and thought. "Wait, am I still in the same combat zone as I was knocked out in?!"  
"Obviously yes, I haven't been able to get anyone out, have I? I've sat in here ever since you victims found your way to me, looking after you all and making sure none of those wandering horrors gets in here."  
"How long have I been out?"  
"At most half-an-hour."  
"Shit, shit, shit." he muttered to himself. "Lady, where did you put my weapons? I'm gonna need them."  
"You're not thinking about going back out there, are you?!" she screeched. "It's DANGEROUS! You could be killed!"  
"All part of the job, ma'am. Before we left Iraq we were specifically told that if we were separated before we received our orders we should seek a superior officer to give them to us. Now I know why, they anticipated this kind of a gangfuck, and now I've got to fight my way to a superior officer. Which is pretty hard to do when you're disarmed. Where are my weapons?"  
"Errr, what did they look like?" she asked nervously. "Were they made of metal and strangely-shaped?"  
"The M16 isn't that strange, but yeah."  
"Oh dear. I believe that I've already disposed of them."  
"You WHAT?"  
"Well, I had to make a potion for the unfortunate man there looking like a cactus, and the recipe called for a lot of metal, so I put in all the metallic things you were carrying. Without it, I don't believe he'd make it."  
"Even my knife?"  
"No, I didn't, but what on earth would you want with a knife?"  
"Stab people who attack."  
"You - good heavens, you Muggles are even more barbaric than I thought!"  
"It's not a primary weapon. They're only issued in case we run out of ammo, or some crazy witch-doctor melts our assault rifles."  
"Could you please show some respect? I did save your life."  
"I'm not sure you did." Shepherd replied hardly. "Give me the knife and I'll be on my way. If I survive long enough to get a proper weapon, I'll be back at some point to thank you for saving my life."  
"Fine." she said huffily, holding out the knife as though it were a pointless, ungainly object. Shepherd snatched it up and strode purposefully to the door.  
He looked through the keyhole. Beyond was an empty hallway. A long, stone, fire-lit, empty hallway, with many doors going off it on the left side and none on the right. The wall tapestries animated like high-quality CGI, and there was a somewhat rusty suit of armour near the door and two more at the end of the corridor. He pressed his ear against the door and listened. For what the nurse claimed was a war zone, it was exceptionally quiet. Was the whole place soundproof? Probably. Wizards wouldn't like being disturbed by outside noises while whipping up spells. He looked through the keyhole again to make sure nobody was on the other side. Strangely, he sensed that along the corridor there was presence. So he scrutinised every inch of what he could see. Nobody there. Just the suits of armour and those living tapestries, who surely couldn't be a threat. His instincts were usually right, so why were they wrong now?  
Holding the knife in a stabbing position, as he had been taught in Close-Quarters Combat Training, Shepherd silently turned the doorknob, then launched himself through the door, eyes wild. With his wholly inadequate knowledge of magic, anything could be a hidden threat, and he treated everything as such. Satisfied at last that the hallway was devoid of threat and he was just being paranoid, he closed the door, lowered the knife and began walking forward.  
The suit of armour turned its head towards him. The smooth backing of the helmet reflected light, seeming to glare at the dumbstruck corporal Shepherd. The right gauntlet reached down and drew the sword from its scabbard with a metallic zing. The left gauntlet joined the right, holding the sword almost awkwardly over its head. It dragged its dusty feet from their moorings of centuries and began shambling towards Shepherd with the occasional squeal of rust.  
Once Shepherd had got past the utter astonishment that an object empty of life was his foe, he realised several things. Firstly, although this suit of armour had clearly been bewitched to attack him, it certainly hadn't been installed with this intention in mind, or else it would be in better fighting shape. Therefore the spellworking had probably occurred recently, which meant that some of the wizards were working against the soldiers, almost undoubtedly. Secondly, it was such a poor animation and such a poor subject for animation, he could bypass it easily, probably destroy it even. Thirdly, it might be a good idea to destroy it, because then at least he'd have a sword instead of a knife, one step up, although only non-Muggles would have any idea how many chunks he'd have to take out of this thing to end the animation to then retrieve the sword. Fourthly, if this suit of armour was bewitched, it was a good bet the two down the corridor were bewitched too, so he'd better get a move on wrecking this damn thing.  
Shepherd advanced nimbly, knife raised to his chest. The armour hulked ever closer. Shepherd and the armour were two metres apart. Shepherd jumped in front of the armour, jumped back as it brought its bastard sword down in a tight arc, and jumped in close again. With one arm he drove the sword arm into the wall, with the other he began stabbing with the knife. He punctured half a dozen frenzied slits into the neck joint before it twisted around and lashed out with an impressively strong backhand blow to the jaw. Surprised, Shepherd fell backwards and would have fallen to the floor had it not been for the wall now supporting him. He recovered quickly and ducked low, just avoiding the clumsy sideswipe from his automated enemy. He jumped up and embedded his knife into the neck up to the hilt. The already frail neck-joint felt like a can lid which had already been three-quarters opened by a can opener. Shepherd noticed this. Leaving the knife in, he grabbed the sword arm with both hands and pushed it against the wall with both hands, blocked the left punch and punched the thing in the head with his own left hand. The head partially came off, and the knife dropped to the ground behind the armour. He punched again. The head fell backwards, but still held on with a tiny thread of steel. He punched downwards onto it, lightly gashing his hand on the jagged edges and taking the head completely off. It clattered to the floor and rolled away.  
Then the armour punched him in the ribs. Shepherd had forgotten that although his foe was hominid, it was not going to be killed, because it was not alive. He could not sit here stabbing at the thing all day until it completely fell apart. It was time to ask for help from the only witch he knew. Shepherd ducked under its armpit before it could attack any more and pelted for the infirmary.  
"Afternoon, ma'am." he said amicably. "Could you help me get rid of this thing?"  
"I did tell you, it's dangerous to try to leave right now." she answered shrilly, but drew her wand and rolled up her sleeves all the same. She strolled over to the door. "Finite incantatem!" she cried.  
This had absolutely no effect. The suit of armour continued advancing all the same.  
"Ah, umm." she stalled. "I'm a medicine specialist. I don't know any more powerful banishment spells."  
"Well, is there anything we can do to manually wreck that fucking thing?" he panted. "Maybe throw something caustic over it? Or make it so hot it melts?"  
"Not a bad idea." she acknowledged. "I'm brewing up some anti-shock potion for the cactus-man, but it only takes two seconds to make and it's acid right now. Help me drag the cauldron."  
Shepherd and the nurse yanked the pewter cauldron off the fire and near the door. He noticed a long, shallow pewter tub attached to the wall for some medical purpose and immediately ripped it off the wall. He hauled this over to the door and pointed it at the suit of armour, which was still shambling forwards resolutely. Then he tipped the contents of the cauldron into the tub, stood at the side of the tub furthest from the suit of armour and waited. Several seconds later the armour came to the door. It took care to step over the lip of the tub and continued walking towards Shepherd and the nurse. Its feet began fizzing instantly, and before it had taken another step its foot was mostly dissolved, and with a crack it began walking on its shins. These dissolved quickly too, but still it marched on heedless. When its knees were dissolved the magic was visibly weakened, the thing's movements were even more shaky and jerky than they had already been. Shepherd stepped forwards and prised the sword from the armour's grip, then stepped back several paces. The armour had lost the entire of both legs to the acid but was enchanted to continue moving towards its enemy, and predictably fell full-length into the tub with a splash. Within seconds there was nothing left.  
"That was by far the strangest combat I've ever seen." Shepherd opined. "Well, thank you for saving my life again, miss..."  
"Pomfrey." she said distractedly. "Madame Pomfrey."  
"My earlier promise is still on, Madame. If I manage to find a gun and find my superiors, I will find you and thank you." She pointed her wand at the gash in his hand and muttered something. The cut magically healed itself. Shepherd smiled his gratitude, held the bastard sword in front of him as he stepped over the tub of acid and continued down the corridor. 


	3. Swordsman

Much like before, when Shepherd stepped on a certain piece of ground it was like a switch was thrown, turning on the two psychotic suits of armour down the hall. But these two were brand-new suits of armour with no design flaws, no animation flaws and far more intelligence. They bounded down the corridor swiftly towards him, practise-swinging their own bastard swords through the air. It was plain that if he fought them, even if he fought them one at a time, he would die. So he tried one of the doors. It was a classroom, useless to him. He opened another door. It was another classroom. So was the next. Shepherd got the idea that they were all classrooms. He knew that neither him nor Madame Pomfrey could take these two on, even with the acid, so he hollered, "Madame! Don't let them get in!" and barricaded his own door; in one powerful motion he sliced the support board of some mahogany bookshelves next to the door, causing all the heavy wood and heavier books to tumble down in front of the door instantly. To complete the barricade Shepherd shoved the oak teacher's desk with all his might until it rammed into the door as well.  
Shepherd was quick in the head. Before he'd sliced the book supports he already knew what he was now going to do. He just hoped the windowsill was wide enough.  
Shepherd opened the window of the classroom. Outside was a picturesque landscape of a wide lake, a luscious forest and beautiful green grounds between everything, this image of perfection marred only by the combat. A long way out several giant spiders were taking turns ramming a wrecked tank. The occupants of said tank made it abundantly clear they weren't going to give up when they fired the 50mm turret directly into the eight- eyed face of one of the spiders. There was also a troop of centaurs riding at top speed around the lake, armed with spears and bows and arrows, and one or two blowing war trumpets. Several dozen harpies flew around a pitifully small band of troops, who had taken cover inside their vehicles, which had been wrecked by a few ogres who now lay dead with very large holes in their chests, clearly from M203 launch grenades. There was also a troll meandering past in the distance. Most importantly, none of them were paying any attention to the castle, so he shouldn't suffer any for climbing out the window. Shepherd wished he'd thought to steal the scabbard as well as the blade, because now he only had one hand to climb with. He stepped onto a chair, then onto the rightmost windowsill. He ducked under the window, hanging his sword loosely, and then gripped the side of the windowframe with his other hand very tightly. He looked down. Mistake. He was on the fifth floor, which spelt certain death from a fall unless with an extremely soft landing. There were repeated sharp cracking noises from inside the room. The suits of armour were attempting to hack apart the door. The windowsill on the outside was less than three inches wide and the window below was miles away, he wouldn't be able to climb down, but he should be able to climb left to the next classroom. He focused on the windowframe to his left. He reached across himself and shut the window with the hand holding the sword. He then let that arm fall loose again. He was leaning back, bracing the arches of his feet against the tiny stone ledge, holding on with five cramped fingers. He pulled himself up sharply, let go with his left hand and reached for the next windowframe. He caught it, just barely, and pulled once again to stop himself falling backwards. Then he transferred his feet to the next windowsill, opened the window with the sword hand, climbed in stealthily, shut the window, and Shepherd heard cheering in his head from the adoring fans.  
Next door, the automatons had managed to hack apart the barricades and bounded into the room. Shepherd heard their footsteps as they scoured the room for him. He smiled and walked out of the room silently, holding up the bastard sword, and walked down the full length of the corridor past where the animations had been originally stationed.  
Shepherd peeked around the corner with one eye only. It was another long corridor with animated tapestries and suits of armour. He sincerely hoped that these suits of armour weren't animated too, or else soon he'd be monkeying about outside again, climbing on windowsills. But there were also staircases coming off the corridor too now.  
"I don't see why we have do another check." came a voice from the stairs, softened by distance. "Everyone up here is either dead or has holed up for good. We won't catch anybody else moving about, because anybody left alive is both too clever for us to find them without using every individual anti-stealth spell in the book, and is too chickenshit to stand and fight. We're wasting our time."  
"Well, it's still worth keeping any remaining chickenshits scared and in the shadows, which periodic appearances would do for us, and since the original battle is over we aren't particularly needed anymore, so wasting our time is as good a way as any to spend it." was the response.  
"Still, couldn't they have gotten some other fucksticks to do it?" the first one asked.  
Shepherd broke cover and ran up to the nearest bronze statue. To his intense relief it was not animated, and no other traps were sprung either. This location was a far better place to spring on two assholes coming from the stairs. The two people (Shepherd surmised they were both evil and wizards from what they were saying) continued bickering and stamping up the stairs. Specifically, the staircase ten feet from his dark hiding place. Shepherd brought in his sword where it wouldn't reflect light, held his breath and raced through the appropriate tactics in his mind.  
The two wizards came to the top of the stairs, seemed to ponder which path to take, and turned right. Towards Shepherd. His heart beat a tap- dance in his ribcage. The duo came level with Shepherd, didn't notice him, and walked on. They were wearing long black cloaks and silver masks. Shepherd stood up silently, walked a few steps and sprinted the last few steps. They both turned. He brought the bastard sword whistling down through the air, putting both hands on the hilt and pulling the blade towards himself to add slicing power. The keen, heavy blade sliced right through the neck of the wizard on the right, and his masked severed head bounced away as blood spurted to the ceiling. Because he'd pulled the sword towards himself, the sword was already in position for his next attack. He thrust forwards and slightly upwards at the second wizard's abdominal region, the sword digging in between his ribs. The wizard tried to draw breath for the incantation of an offensive spell, but for some reason it became a lot harder to draw breath after a bastard sword had punctured each of his lungs. Shepherd dropped the handle of the sword and the wizard immediately dropped to the floor, partially propped up by the sword which impaled him. He coughed up blood and gagged, then shuddered and lay still.  
Breathing hard, Shepherd kicked away their wands and knelt down to search their pockets. He eventually came up with what he wanted; a Desert Eagle .50, in this case with attached laser sight. Probably a trophy he'd stolen off some soldier victim, this ex-wizard probably didn't even know how to use it. Shepherd kicked their corpses a few times to avenge the unnamed soldier, then checked the clip. It was full, but neither of the two men had any spare clips. That meant he could kill a maximum of seven people before he'd need to find more ammo.  
He smiled wryly. In this hellhole, he'd be lucky to kill one more person. 


	4. Lone Soldier?

Shepherd moved down the stairway silently, Desert Eagle pointing inquisitively at every place there could be an enemy. He reached the bottom of the first flight of stairs, back against the wall. He then balanced his gun on the banister and looked over it down the second flight of stairs. There was another damn suit of armour and a few oil paintings along the three corridors which came off from the foot of the stairs. Wait, what's that stuff all over the floor? Blood. It had seeped there from around the left corner and it hadn't been disturbed for so long a skin was developing on the surface. He moved from the banister to the wall side of the second flight of stairs, steadying his gun with both hands. He still couldn't see anyone, so he continued walking down the stairs silently, gun extended and ready to fire at any threat. Shepherd hated walking down stairs in front of corridors, for the simple reason that if there was anyone at the far end of the corridor they'd see your legs before you saw them and they could tattoo you five times over before you even realised you'd been targeted, but here he had no choice.  
He reached the bottom of the stairs (to his relief) and there wasn't anybody at the end of the corridor. But the blood splash was very disconcerting. He shimmied along the left wall, looking to make sure there wasn't anybody immediately on the right, and then swung his gun around the left corner. The blood splash came from a dismembered corpse of a twelve- year-old wearing robes less than a metre in front of Shepherd. Flies buzzed around it, and it looked as though some creature had torn out his heart and eaten it. He looked further along the corridor. There were four other corpses in various positions, two of them very young witches, one of them a very old wizard and one of them a soldier. The soldier's shotgun, sidearm Desert Eagle and ammo pack were in perfect shape. Then Shepherd looked slightly further and saw the creature that had done all this.  
It was quite short, but extremely muscly and imposing. It was human- looking, but with dirty grey fur all over its body, matted with dried blood, and with massive paws in place of hands. It seemed to be patrolling this stretch of corridor, stomping up and down it wildly, looking for its next kill. Shepherd could only assume it then smelt him, because although he'd been completely silent, its head snapped around, and it charged at him with remarkable speed. Shepherd tried to get a good aim on it, but it seemed to understand the danger of the gun, because the instant the weapon was pointed at him it flitted to the side while still running forwards. Shepherd continued trying to aim properly, then fired. The bullet ricocheted off the wall near the creature. He fired again. This bullet hit it in the shoulder, and it fell to its knees. He fired a third time, the laser sight helping to get a perfectly accurate round to the forehead. The creature toppled over backwards without a sound and didn't move.  
Shepherd exhaled - then he felt the air move behind him. Instantly he hurled himself down and to the right, looking backwards. A ten-foot-tall troll had somehow snuck up on him and with its stone club swung a redwood- smashing blow directly at Shepherd's chest. The massive club bashed into the stone wall, pulverising much of it into dust. On the ground, Shepherd aimed for centre mass and fired four times in fast succession, emptying the Desert Eagle. The immensely stupid troll groaned in pain, but didn't even move. Shepherd jumped to his feet, pocketed the empty sidearm, and sprinted down the corridor with Olympic proficiency. He reached the soldier's corpse and picked up his shotgun, checking the gauges. Suddenly a door was booted open several metres in front of him and another of the snarling, bloodthirsty creatures came out. Automatically Shepherd whipped up the shotgun and pulled the trigger, spraying buckshot into its abdomen, knocking it over backwards. He recocked it just as the second and third ones came out of the door and he fired again, knocking both of them over too with one blast. He recocked it and glanced backwards. He dove to the side with inhuman speed, the troll's thrown club sailing just past him and smashing into the one gutshot creature who was still alive and trying to get up. He fired at the troll once, made it flinch, fired twice, made it stumble, and pulled the trigger again. There was an empty click. There were no more loaded shells. The troll was still jogging forwards, badly hurt. He dropped the shotgun and snatched up the Desert Eagle on the floor. He fired into troll's chest. It stopped, gasping, and leant against the wall. He fired into its chest again, and it fell down screaming. He walked up to it and fired into the back of its head. It stopped screaming abruptly.  
Shepherd spat on the troll and walked over to the soldier's corpse. Shepherd ripped off the man's dog tags, then looted the weapons and ammo. He now owned an eight-gauge shotgun with quite a few spare shells, two Desert Eagles with four and a half clips between them and a combat knife. For the first time since Goose-2 dropped, he felt like a soldier.  
Shotgun extended, Shepherd walked into the room three of those bear- things had come out of. One possibility was that there was one bear-thing left in the room waiting for him to come in, which would then knock the shotgun out of his hands. He knew this possibility, so he was just as prepared to dive backwards and draw two D Eagles as he was to pull the trigger of his Remington. But the room contained no more creatures. There were two guys passed out and tied up in the corner, however.  
Shepherd looked around the room. The creatures had obviously spent some minutes turning it into a shoddy hovel, judging from the open fire in the middle and the sleeping spots made out of diced paper from textbooks. There was also a bucket of water near the centre, and it looked fresh. Probably for drinking. It appeared that the four bear-things had feasted on the five people now lying dead in the hallway, and had been too full to eat these two soldiers, so they instead strung them up for eating later. Their weapons lay in the corner, one of the assault rifles smashed in half, but the other assault rifle (an M16 and M203 combo) and the two sidearms were in excellent condition.  
The two soldiers woke up instantly as the bucket of water was sloshed across their faces. They sputtered and looked around.  
One of the two gave a feeble smile. If he hadn't been beaten up so much, with one eye swollen shut and several teeth missing, it would've been a handsome, winning smile. "Thanks for helping us out, man. I thought I was a goner. Could you cut these ropes, please?" Shepherd nodded, drew his combat knife into one hand, and started sawing away at the thin ropes binding their hands and feet. In seconds both were free. One of them immediately got to his feet and retrieved his assault rifle and pistol. The other one tried to get up and howled in agony.  
"Brian? What's the problem?" his friend asked, concerned.  
"It's my ankle, Sean. It's fucked. I can't walk."  
Shepherd leant in for a closer look. "Yeah, that's more twisted than a stick of liquorice. Come on, soldier. On your feet." Shepherd supported Brian under his shoulder, letting Brian walk on his good leg.  
"What's your name, sir?" Sean asked, handing Brian his Desert Eagle, who immediately holstered it.  
"Corporal Shepherd." he answered automatically.  
"Sir, we were separated from our unit before we could receive our orders, sir. Um, what are they, sir?"  
"I don't know either, private, because I got separated too."  
"Great. Just great. I've finally served my tour of duty in Iraq and then I pull this hellish assignment. Which egregious politico is responsible for this shit? Who decided that it would be a marvellous Goddamn idea to attack a wizard school infested with mythical creatures?"  
"We'll probably never know, soldier, but if we're lucky we'll survive long enough to get out of here and sign an Official Secrets Act, and maybe the American equivalent too. Now this place, as you've noticed, is a magical school. This school has an infirmary upstairs, and there's a magical nurse in it. She could probably treat your ankle in seconds, Brian, so that's our first stop. Sean, act as advance scout. We want to turn left out of this room, go up the first set of stairs, turn right down that corridor and follow it to the end. But watch out for the suits of armour which have been bewitched to attack anyone who comes close."  
Sean was very nervous as he moved out of the room. He managed to keep a trigger on both ends of the corridor while Shepherd helped Brian limp after him. Sean got to the stairway with Shepherd several metres behind, and looked down the corridor coming off the stairs. "Freeze!" he screamed, then the characters he was talking to must've decided not to freeze, so he opened fire, letting off three-round bursts. Shepherd picked up Brian in a fireman's lift and handed him his shotgun. Shepherd then charged for the stairway, chancing a look down the corridor. There were ten dead troglodytes, armed with spears, down the hall, with swarms of other troglodytes pouring into the building after their fallen brethren. Brian fired three times with the shotgun at them before Shepherd took them out of sight up the stairs. Sean sprinted up the staircase after them. He stopped after the first flight of stairs and rummaged in his kitbag. He came up with a small laser mine and set it on the banister.  
"Let's go!" Sean shouted, and darted in front of Shepherd. He slammed himself against the wall of the staircase, looking left down the corridor, then threw himself across the hallway at the other wall and stared right. "Clear." was his verdict and he ran on. Shepherd hustled along behind him as Brian acted as rear guard with the shotgun. An explosion rocked the building, and shrapnel flew up the staircase like a cloud. Shepherd handed Brian some shotgun shells to reload, and Sean put his weapon and eye around the corner. "Clear." he reiterated. Brian cocked the now-full shotgun and immediately fired at two troglodytes who had just run up the stairs, ripping them apart. They were replaced by five troglodytes from the stairs. Shepherd ran around the corner.  
And there, at the end of the hall, were the two suits of armour Shepherd had run away from, attracted by the gunshots. They held their bastard swords just as surely as they had before, even though this time they were outnumbered and hopelessly outgunned. Sean fired a launch grenade from the M203 attached underneath the barrel of his M16. It sailed through the air and hit the foremost suit of armour in the groin. It was instantly reduced to tin foil, and the suit of armour next to it lost its sword arm. Its magic ebbing away, it tried to retrieve the sword into its left hand. Brian blasted the damaged thing into several parts, and it did not move. Neither Sean nor Shepherd broke stride while doing this. Brian then turned around and fired again, tearing up four more troglodytes because they were so tightly compacted. Sean suddenly fired three times into one of the rooms Shepherd had entered before, resulting in an unearthly death snarl. Alerted by this, Shepherd drew a Desert Eagle while still running and pointed it into the room Sean fired into; he fired once at one of the three live harpies in the room, but missed. Brian fired twice more during this time, then fired three times at the harpies who flew into the hallway and chased them, emptying the shotgun. Brian pulled out his Desert Eagle and emptied it too, killing the harpies and a few more troglodytes. He then ceased firing and held onto the two empty weapons as Shepherd still ran on, lactic acid seizing up his muscles.  
Sean got to the infirmary door. "Open up the God damn door! Now!!" he screamed urgently. There was no reply. "Open it now!" Still no reply.  
"Please, Madame Pomfrey!" Shepherd begged with what little breath he had left. He kept on running, ten metres from the door, dozens of troglodytes ten metres back. Sean reloaded the M203 and launched another bomb, mincing maybe ten, then continued firing. The idea of a last stand right here set in his head, he fired on full-auto, a tortured glint in his eye as he shrieked loud enough to wake the dead. Because of this he didn't notice when Madame Pomfrey yanked open the door behind him. Shepherd charged past, and Brian grabbed Sean around the neck and dragged him in after them. She slammed the door and did some very fast spellwork to seal the door. There were the apparent sounds of nearly a hundred troglodytes all shoving at the door trying to force it open, but not even the dust was shaken from the door. 


	5. How To Defeat One Hundred Troglodytes

Everyone sat panting for a minute.  
"Thank you once again, Madame Pomfrey, for saving my life." Shepherd told her. "Meet Brian and Sean. Sean is the one who was doing an impression of Rambo and Brian is the one here with the twisted ankle who I was carrying. Is there anything you can do for him?"  
"I can fix him in seconds, but it'll have to wait, I need to sort out the others first." she said breezily, getting back to work. Sean gathered up everybody's weapons and began consolidating the clips and reloading. Shepherd lit a fag. Madame Pomfrey fed some potion to the witch, whose eyes opened. Madame Pomfrey reassured the girl in undertones, and slowly explained what had happened, why she was here, and who the others were. She then walked over to the cactus-man and fed him liberal amounts of a different potion (which appeared to be the one made out of Shepherd's assault rifle and sidearm). The witch sat up in her bed, looking around. Shepherd's and her eyes locked. She looked him over peculiarly. He must have been the first Muggle soldier she'd ever seen. She got out of the bed and walked to a sink, where she washed her blood-caked hair. When she threw back her hair after she'd washed everything out, Shepherd realised two things: firstly, she was pretty, and secondly, he was staring. He averted his eyes quickly. Even if this was the time or the place to chase after young girls, he didn't think he was her type. So he watched Sean clean the weapons instead.  
"Take your shoe and sock off and put your leg up on the table." commanded Madame Pomfrey, appearing suddenly with her wand out. "And put out that ghastly thing." she snapped at Shepherd. Both Brian and Shepherd obliged. She prodded Brian in the ankle with her wand and a look of concentration passed over her face. She sighed. "It's done. You should be able to walk now."  
"Hey, not bad!" Brian exclaimed, exercising his foot. He stood up, walked in a circle, then put his sock and shoe back on. "Thanks, lady."  
"My name is Madame Pomfrey." she informed him icily.  
"Right. Hey, if I make it out alive, I'll buy you anything you want."  
"Now, men, we need to get out of here." Shepherd told his two charges. "Any idea how we can go about that?"  
"It just so happens that I have some rappelling equipment in my bergen." Sean smiled. "Even with only one set we should easily be able to descend to ground level out the window."  
"Sounds good." Shepherd approved. "What's our armoury like?"  
"Not good." Sean admitted, smile faltering. "Four Desert Eagle pistols with three and a half seven-round clips between them, one Remington shotgun with twenty shells, one M16/M203 combo with four thirty-round clips and three more 203 bombs. Precious little. The only really armed person is the one with the AR."  
"Then until we properly load up we take avoidance tactics and only fire in self-defence." Shepherd decided. "Brian, you take the shotgun and the D Eagle with the half-clip, Sean, you take the other three D Eagles, and I get the AR. Brian rappels down first, then me, then Sean. Set it up."  
Brian distributed the weapons while Sean anchored down the rappelling equipment. Sean gave a brief lesson on rappelling, saying what body part goes where in the harness etc. Then Brian and Shepherd opened up two of the windows. The view out of the windows was very similar to what Shepherd saw before, when climbing on the outside of the building to avoid the suits of armour, except that from here he couldn't see the lake and most of the outdoor conflict had finished by now. He couldn't see any fighting going on outside, nor any patrolling beasts or wizards. This outlined to him that no one, not the evil wizards, the good wizards, the beasts nor the soldiers, cared about what was outside the castle, they only cared about what was inside it.  
Shepherd suddenly realised something. The first time he got to the bottom of the stairs, he shot a bear-thingy and immediately afterwards had to deal with a troll. Neither of the two kinds of creatures struck Shepherd to be the chummy type nor the ruthlessly intelligent type, yet they must have been working together, or else they'd have attacked each other long before he descended to their floor, and one of them he wouldn't have had to deal with. What could possibly cause monsters like those to act civilised to each other?  
"Scan the skies, too." Sean reminded them. "There could be other harpies."  
"Or worse, some of those psycho undead Pegasi." Shepherd added. Everyone stared at him. "It was flying horse skeletons that took down my ride on the way here."  
"Oh!" exclaimed the girl. Everyone looked at her. "Flying horse skeletons in the Forbidden Forest - Hagrid told us what those are, they're Thestrals. You can only see them if you've seen death."  
"Death is our job, honey." Brian boomed. "Of course we've seen it."  
"But you specifically have to see people die, not just anything." she added.  
"Please, I've killed two people this afternoon alone, not to mention Iraq." Shepherd laughed.  
"Don't tell me those two butchered guys in masks in the hallway were your handiwork, corporal!" Brian exclaimed.  
"Yeah." he said smugly. "I didn't have a gun, so used a sword I stole. That stuff should be in basic training."  
"Masks?" Madame Pomfrey asked suddenly. "What kind of masks?"  
"Silver masks, and black cloaks with hoods." Shepherd answered.  
Though the girl was completely nonplussed, Madame Pomfrey squeaked in fright and sank into a chair. "No... I don't believe it... but it's the only explanation..."  
"What's the matter?" Shepherd asked, startled.  
"My dear..." she swallowed. "Silver masks and black cloaks are the trademark of the most evil kind of wizards ever to walk the earth, the Death Eaters. They were followers of Lord Voldemort, the most terrible of all - "  
"Yeah, yeah, story time is over, ya senile cow." Sean said loudly. "Come on, Brian. Put on the harness."  
"You don't understand!" she cried. "Lord Voldemort cannot be killed! The only person who came close to doing so is in this school at the moment, he managed to rebound the killing curse Voldemort sent at him while still in infancy! He has faced Voldemort three times since, and each time barely escaped with his life! If his followers are responsible for these atrocities, he may well have returned and be here right now, in which case we should all be running as fast as we can!"  
"No!" the seventeen-year-old shouted. "If we run, then the demons in the Forbidden Forest will kill us! We are in the safest place we can get to!"  
"While this is all fascinating," Shepherd interrupted sarcastically, "it doesn't change what my men and I have to do. So hook up, Brian. Don't let the fairy tales scare you." Brian finished doing up the fittings, grabbed his shotgun off the table, gave Sean a thumbs-up, and climbed out the window. He went out of sight.  
"Ummm, corporal?" Sean said nervously. "Something just occurred to me. He's rappelling in front of windows. What if some of those masked freaks on another floor sees the rope, reaches out the window and cuts it?"  
Shepherd paused. "We'll just have to risk it, soldier. The other option is opening the infirmary door and battling it out with all those troglodytes. Even assuming 'one shot one kill' I think they'd kick our asses."  
Eventually Brian reached the ground five stories below, detached himself and signalled (by shaking the rope) they could pull it up. Shepherd lost no time in doing this. He glanced outside once more for flying enemies, saw none, and attached himself to the harness. He picked up his weapon and climbed out of the window.  
Rappelling down the castle wall was boring but nerve-wracking. After what Sean had said Shepherd was prepared to try and grab one of the two- inch window ledges at any time if his rope was cut. Finally after passing what seemed like a dozen windows, each of which he was forced to pass with his gun aimed through the window in case a combatant was staring back, he finally reached the bottom. He unclipped himself from the harness, left the harness attached to the rope and shook the rope vigorously. Then he turned around and faced Brian. The grounds immediately around Hogwarts sloped gently downwards, away towards the various features around Hogwarts: a lake, the Forbidden Forest, and two roads leading out of sight, all in perfect view from here because of the concave slope. Shepherd knew he'd be out in the open once at the bottom, but didn't think he'd be this open. He could practically feel the innumerable enemy laser sights burning his skin. Except that, of course, none of the enemies would use laser sights. The time he had waiting for Sean was spent trying to look like the uniform grey stone behind him, to not attract attention.  
At long last the three of them stood at the bottom. Sean shook the rope and the seventeen-year-old began pulling it back up. "I told them to keep it." he explained. "Now they have an escape route if the trogs break through the door."  
This sparked off a memory for Shepherd. In his youth he did quite a lot of ranting, and he remembered once saying that in all cases soldiers changed or abridged their opponents' names to something disparaging to keep in a tough state of mind. And here was proof of that. Sean had only been aware of the existence of troglodytes for ten minutes and already he referred to them as 'trogs'.  
"There's nobody outside, so we're going back inside the castle." Shepherd ordered. "Not the main entrance. Let's see if we can find a side entrance."  
"Or we can climb in through this window, sir." Brian suggested. Shepherd looked. It was an open window leading into an empty room with the door shut. Having good luck made a nice change.  
"Good plan, soldier." Shepherd said. "You first." 


	6. Search and Rescue

Brian holstered one of his Desert Eagles and used the free arm to climb onto the windowsill, holding the other one steady. He looked all around the room, including the ceiling, and pronounced, "Clear." He dropped in. Sean followed, Shepherd being on lookout, then Shepherd followed. The room seemed to be used for recording Hogwarts history, as there were dozens and dozens of bookshelves in this room with titles plainly outlining Hogwarts lore.  
"Okay," Shepherd whispered, "if the architecture is like it is upstairs, there'll only be one corridor from the door, but it probably isn't because this is the ground floor. Probably there's two or more corridors. Brian, you slice it left, Sean, you slice it right, and I'll cover you from behind the scribe's desk."  
Shepherd ducked behind the desk and set the safety-catch on his M16 to single-shot mode (i.e. one round fired per trigger pull), Sean crouched to the left of the door holding one Desert Eagle and Brian crouched to the right of the door with his shotgun in one hand. Shepherd nodded, then Brian nodded. Sean twisted the doorknob, threw the door open and pointed his pistol down the path to the right of the door. Brian caught the door and pointed his shotgun down the path to the left of the door. Shepherd pointed his AR straight out the door. While Brian and Sean were looking down corridors, Shepherd was looking at a great set of double-doors with stained glass. Shepherd broke cover and silently moved towards the door. Sean moved into the doorway, and Brian stood up and moved into the doorway, the result being that neither one was a particularly easy target, between them they could see the entire corridor and neither one was in the other's line of fire.  
"Clear." they chorused. Shepherd walked up to the double doors and peered through the stained glass, even though the dirty and primitively created glass made vision hazy. Through the doors was some kind of a great hall, with five tables in it. It was an absolute slaughterhouse, with wizards' bodies piled high. All manner of outlandish creatures patrolled this area, and several wizards in reflective masks. That made it even clearer that something very weird was going on. It made sense that all the mythical creatures he'd seen so far would attack random people, as they were all either carnivores or notoriously bad-tempered, but they were actively not attacking each other or any of these wizards in the silver masks. There was no natural explanation, so this was the work of somebody. Who organised this devious hit on a school? Which led him back to the question; why had the US army been ordered to go into here? And where was here, anyway? He could guess it was in the United Kingdom, because the two conscious civvies he'd come across both spoke in British accents. It would politically take a lot to divert troops en route home to another mission, and it would take even more if this mission was to be carried out on an ally's soil.  
Well, he wasn't going to find the answer by standing here, he'd find it when he found a superior God damn officer. If any were left. What Shepherd was hearing was dozens of assault rifles NOT being fired, which in normal circumstances meant one side had been decimated. Judging by the throngs of lethal creatures and evil wizards on the other side of the door, it wasn't his opponent. Shepherd gritted his teeth. "If we don't find a superior officer within the next two hours, we bail." he ordered in a whisper. He motioned left with his M16 and walked left. His two charges walked with him, Sean acting as rear guard while the other two kept their guns trained forwards.  
Shepherd and co. then methodically searched the school. They kept well away from all enemies, hiding from patrols and avoiding sentries, while they walked around silently. They searched scores of classrooms before coming to the Gryffindor common-room.  
Of course, they didn't know it was the Gryffindor common-room. All they could see through the slashed-to-ribbons Fat Lady's portrait was that it was a place of gathering, with a fireplace (the fire had burned down to embers), a bunch of comfortable chairs and settees, and more portraits on the wall. They entered cautiously, but reasoned that nobody was here unless they were exceptionally quiet.  
"Hey, anybody here?" Brian whispered. "You can come out now if you're hiding. We're US marines."  
"I'm corporal Shepherd." Shepherd added.  
"Shepherd?" a voice whisper-shouted from a very dark corner behind a settee. "Holy shit, is that you, Shepherd?" The speaker stood up. His brown hair had flecks of grey, his combat uniform was badly creased and soaked in sweat, and he carried no weapon except his knife.  
"No - colonel Black?"  
"It is you! You crazy bastard, you got reassigned to this fubar op too?" colonel Black grinned in delight.  
"Unfortunately I did. I notice that you're still getting into situations where I save your ass. Is it becoming a habit? Do you realise I've already saved your life?"  
"Do we have to do the routine every time we meet? Fine." He began speaking in a self-important way. "I could've easily survived those two rag- heads. I had an M60, they had AKs, at medium-long range."  
"But your gun was facing completely the wrong way when they opened up." Shepherd replied with great satisfaction. The manner in which he spoke suggested that he'd spoken these words many times before. "By the time you brought it around, they'd have perforated you like a spaghetti-strainer."  
"Not with Soviet-surplus AK-47s. You know how shit they are."  
"They were putting so much metal your way it would have been impossible for both of them to miss with their entire clips. If I hadn't been standing in that bell tower with an LSW, you'd be six feet under."  
"Keep dreaming, Shepherd." Black replied airily, then dropped the façade. "How ya doing, ya old bastard?"  
"Looks like I'm doing a lot better than you are. How did you get here? Where are your weapons?"  
"No time for niceties? Well, I used up every last round I had fighting a group of centaurs, then the last couple of guys near me got hit, so I dropped everything on me as I ducked in through the school gates so I could run away faster. I didn't look where I was going, I just climbed stairs because the centaurs had trouble with stairs. Then I saw some trolls and ran even further, eventually ending up here. Private, give me that shotgun." Brian obliged. Shepherd gave Sean a quick look, which he understood; he gave Brian one of his pistols.  
"Sir, we were told before we left that if we were separated from leadership before we received our orders we should search for higher- ranking people to give us our orders. That's what's happened here, none of us have a clue what our orders are. Please tell me that you were high- ranking enough to be told in Iraq, or we're gonna have to search for people even longer."  
"I'm not, actually, but I was told my orders when I landed. The orders from on high are thus; we are to get into the castle, kill everyone, and get out."  
There was a pause.  
"What?" queried Sean.  
"What?" defended Black.  
"We were specifically ordered by the US government to kill British citizens?" Shepherd snarled. "No, that's not something the US does."  
"That's exactly what the commander said our orders were." Black confirmed. "Just kill everybody here."  
"That's an act of war on a long-standing ally." Shepherd stated. "That's not something Rumsfeld would order. These are perverted orders and a perverted mission. We have unwittingly become part of a splinter militia."  
The colonel frowned, somewhat alarmed. "That's enough, corporal." Black ordered. "Think nothing of the sort. Come on, we need to get out of here. We can pretty well assume the wandering creatures will finish off anybody left alive, so mission accomplished. We need to get to the evac point."  
"Sir, there's no guarantee that the choppers will still be there, they were probably forced to take off long ago. And it's not just creatures wandering. There are some people in black robes and silver masks."  
"There are? Shit, we're gonna have to kill them too." Black announced.  
"Are you nuts?" exploded Sean. "If we fire one shot they'll find us and kill us. The one consideration we should have, now we know what our loony orders were, is how to get out alive!"  
Black stepped around the settee and marched up to Sean, eye to eye. Sean quailed slightly. "Soldier, you are out of line. Fall in. Move out." he said softly.  
"Sir yes sir." he said humbly.  
The group of soldiers then stealthily snuck out. They hid from the increasingly frequent creature patrols, continuously being cut off from their chosen path by something-or-other. Shepherd was very glad that they didn't see any more of the silver-masked wizards, or else Black would've probably shot at them and given away his position, quickly resulting in painful death and being eaten.  
They moved behind the path of a manticore and down a long hallway with few doors. They were most of the way along the hallway when they saw lengthened shadows of trogs with spears on the wall at the far end of the corridor. Shepherd immediately thought, "We need to hide." and turned on his heel. Then he saw the shadows of trolls at the other end and thought, "Trogs are blind, if we go this way we'll have a better chance of hiding in some room." and turned around again. Then he saw the shadows of the trogs divert down some other corridor, and their place taken by the shadows of five giant spiders. Shepherd thought, "Trolls are stupid, if we go back the other way they might not notice us hide in a room." and turned around again. Suddenly he noticed a door just to his left. He couldn't believe he didn't see it before. He muttered, "In here." for Black's benefit, who looked ready to open fire, and opened the door silently. Black and his men bundled into the room quickly, and Sean took great care to shut the door with not even the faintest of rushes of wind. Then Shepherd looked around the room. It was a comfortable place exactly like the room they found Black in (the Gryffindor common-room) right down to the shape of the mantelpiece. On four of the chairs sat four young schoolwizards and schoolwitches in robes.  
"Evening." one of them, a fifteen-year-old kid with stuck-up jet-black hair, black glasses and almond-shaped green eyes, said mildly. 


	7. The Pieces Start Coming Together

"Squad! We've got hostiles!" Black shouted. He brought up his shotgun, but Shepherd stepped in front of it.  
"What is your malfunction, maggot?" Black screamed. "Aiding the enemy! Get out of my way right now if you don't want a court-martial!"  
"They aren't the enemy." Shepherd said evenly. "The enemy is the anti- American asshole who ordered us to wipe out a school. And even if they were the enemy, they're just kids."  
"You think I like killing kids?" Black screamed. "I hate it! But that doesn't matter! They're called ORDERS for a reason, dirtbag! Only my life debt is stopping me from citing a court-martial on you right now! Excuse me now while I act like a soldier should!"  
Black stepped around Shepherd and took aim with the shotgun. Shepherd fired at point-blank range. Black's head exploded, and he crumpled to the ground sideways.  
"Is he - dead?" the witch asked, brown eyes fearful. She stood up, her invisible shaking magnified into visibility at the tips of her bushy hair.  
"No, he's only pretending." Sean scoffed sarcastically.  
"I'm not bothered that someone trying to kill me is dead, to be honest." one said.  
Brian took the treachery somewhat harder. "You shot your CO in the head." he stated in awe.  
Shepherd knelt down beside the man whose life he once saved and checked his pulse. As he expected, there was nothing. Then his training came back to him in a rush.  
"Fuck, they'll have heard the signature." he realised aloud. "Take up positions for a last stand, men." Shepherd overturned a heavy oak table and got behind it. He took all his magazines out of his pockets and put them on the floor next to his knee. He set the safety catch to full-auto. Sean and Brian did similar preparation, after Brian retrieved the fallen shotgun and threw his full Desert Eagle back to Sean.  
"No, don't worry, nobody's coming!" the boy with the glasses announced. "The room's soundproof."  
"The room's soundproof?" Shepherd echoed. "How can it be? There's no seal on the door." Next second he could have kicked himself for such a stupid statement. It's a magical school, genius, anything can happen.  
"The room you've accidentally found is the Room of Requirement. It only appears if you walk past it three times wishing for something. When you do, what you wish for appears in the room, which can also change for your tastes. When we got here first, I wished for a comfortable, soundproof room the creatures couldn't find, so it should be soundproof."  
"And I kept wishing for a place to hide while I turned this way and that in the hallway." remembered Shepherd. "Well, we've forgotten to introduce ourselves. I'm corporal Shepherd, and these are privates Sean and Brian. We have just become a pro-American splinter group within an anti- American splinter group within the US army."  
"I'm Harry Potter," said the boy with glasses, "and this is Hermione Granger - "he indicated the girl with the bushy hair, "- this is Ron Weasley - "he waved at a lanky boy with fiery red hair, "- and this is Dean Thomas." The last guy, busy cleaning a Desert Eagle, grinned weakly. "We're some of the only survivors of this violent massacre perpetrated by Death Eaters."  
"You aren't the first person to call those masked freaks Death Eaters." noted Sean.  
"I think those assholes are responsible too." added Shepherd. "I looked into that massive dining hall and saw piles and piles of corpses, plus some nasty mythical creatures patrolling alongside those wizards."  
"What I saw, about half an hour ago, was swarms of mythical creatures, soldiers, and Death Eaters marching up to the castle." Harry put in. "As we debated before you came in, it has to be Lord Voldemort's work."  
"God damn it, you're on about Lord Voldeperson too!" Brian complained. "Who is he?"  
Harry shuddered. Hermione broke in. "He's the most evil wizard in all of history. Many years ago he started using killing and intimidation to get power in the wizarding world. He succeeded for a long time, too. He killed anyone who stood in his way. He killed Harry's parents, then tried to kill Harry, because a prophecy foretold that Harry would be his greatest foe. But Voldemort's curse rebounded off baby Harry and turned him into a shadow."  
"So you're afraid of a dead wizard?" Sean asked, confused.  
"No. See, in the summer of last year, Voldemort's followers brought him back to life with a ridiculously complicated spell. Clearly Voldemort thought the first order of business would be to get rid of Albus Dumbledore, the only person he was ever afraid of, and Harry Potter at the same time, so it looks as though he somehow gained influence over the creatures who inhabit the Forbidden Forest and used them to attack Hogwarts. I guess his Death Eaters came along for the ride as well. But where do you soldiers fit in?"  
"I'm still trying to figure that out myself." Shepherd told her. "Why would any senior army official want to take out Hogwarts?" He paused. "Unless - "  
"They were being controlled by Voldemort too?" Ron chipped in.  
"The Imperius Curse." Hermione said, at last bringing together some of the pieces. "It makes people do exactly what you want them to do. In this case, a witch or wizard loyal to Voldemort probably used the Imperius Curse on one or two generals to bring in all you soldiers with orders to kill us all."  
"It's slight overkill, though, isn't it?" Dean asked. "Send in all the nastiest bastards in the Forbidden Forest, and a few hundred marines, and all his Death Eaters, and maybe even come in himself?"  
"He obviously didn't want to take chances." Hermione said. "Which is ironic, actually, because the soldiers ended up attacking the creatures and Death Eaters more than the students."  
Suddenly Harry fell to his knees on the floor, holding his head. When he looked up, he had fear in his eyes. "He's here." Harry gasped. "Voldemort's in the Great Hall."  
"Are - are you sure?" Dean asked, scared.  
Harry shook his head to clear it, then nodded. "I just saw out of his eyes. He's torturing Dumbledore in the Great Hall, and he's laughing, even though he knows I'm not dead yet."  
"We need to help him." Ron said at once.  
Shepherd laughed. As insensitive as it was, he laughed out loud at the thought of these four wet-behind-the-ears losers going out to take on hundreds of enslaved creatures from the Forbidden Forest, dozens of evilly competent Death Eaters and the most evil wizard of all time. Most likely they'd be dead before the doors of the Great Hall had even finished opening. Everyone stared at him, some incredulously, some with undisguised dislike. "You couldn't come close to trying to kill Lord Whatsisname. Nothing short of a dozen tanks supported by innumerable heavy machine-guns could get through his defences, and I mean it. He has way too many mythical creatures in that Hall." Shepherd clarified his reasons for laughter.  
"So, the Hall is steeped in mythical creatures, eh?" Hermione said suddenly, a glint in her eye. "That's a flaw in the plan. If we can't fight Voldemort directly, maybe we can do some magic to disrupt his hold on the creatures."  
Shepherd recalled the image of the Hall from looking through the stained-glass door. The mythical creatures far outnumbered the wizards in the room. "Good idea." he and Harry said at exactly the same time.  
"How are we gonna muck up his magic?" Ron asked.  
"When we formed this room I specifically asked for volumes on magical history." Hermione said seriously. "Let's have a flick through them and see if this kind of thing has been done before, and then see if we can do anything about it."  
So everybody, including the soldiers, walked up to the bookshelves and picked out a promising-looking book. They then began reading through them all. Periodically people would get up and take a different book. The books which had been read through lay discarded on the oak table, which had of course been righted since Shepherd overturned it for cover. Shepherd chain- smoked while he read, eyes scanning book after book for any mention of wizards taking control of entire battalions of savage creatures.  
When the sea of discarded books on the table was six deep, the room was like a smokehouse from Shepherd's constant puffing and the clock struck four, Brian whooped in victory.  
"I think I got a winner!"  
"What? What is it?" Hermione demanded, tearing the book away from him before speed-reading the two open pages.  
"Sure, girly, keep it." Brian muttered.  
Hermione looked devilishly happy. "Hah, this is it. It describes how in a part of the world which is now part of Germany, in 1436, the sorceress Windegelt the Worrywart invented and casted a hugely complicated spell, involving a day-long purification ritual, to indefinitely bring the creatures of her local forest under her indirect control to act as a search party for her son, who had gotten slightly lost while away on a solo hunting trip."  
"Voldemort simply ripped off Windegelt's idea." observed Dean.  
"Now, all these creatures, while not directly controlled by Windegelt, did exactly what she wanted them to do. They acted as a search party, and when they found her son, they did not attack him, but participated in a cumulative roar to tell Windegelt where he was. But the son got spooked by this collective yell, and he started firing his crossbow at the beasts. He slew ten of them, and still they did not fight back or stop yelling. Windegelt had mounted her broom at the start of the yelling and sped towards it. She caught sight of her son on the top of a hillock and was about to shout for him to not be frightened, when he did something which he could not have known how catastrophic it would be. He fired a crossbow bolt into the leader of the wolf-pack, an infamous wolf known as Blue Fur because of the strange midnight-blue lustre of his fur. This wolf was undoubtedly the most powerful and influential creature in all of that part of the Germanic wilderness, and because the most powerful and influential creature who had been enslaved had been slain, the magic abruptly broke. The creatures looked around at each other, realised they were standing next to their mortal enemies, and instantly attacked in a mad frenzy. Windegelt's son was also slain in this, so Windegelt committed suicide, yada yada yada. Don't you see?" Hermione cried. "All we have to do is identify the most powerful creature in the Forbidden Forest and kill it, then all the creatures in Hogwarts will kill each other and the Death Eaters, and hopefully even Voldemort!"  
"No." Harry said. "Voldemort will survive. It was foretold that either I would kill him or he would kill me. There is no other way. Once all the creatures are gone, it should just be us and him, and because of the Hogwarts enchantments he won't be able to Disapparate if he suddenly starts to lose. This is the best time there will ever be for me to try and take him down. The final showdown will occur today."  
"You'll have to be quite close when the monster is slain, or else Voldemort will run away before you can return to the Great Hall." Shepherd said thoughtfully.  
"How do you know that this monster isn't in the room with Voldemort?" asked Dean.  
"Because there weren't any really huge creatures in there." Shepherd replied. "I'm sure your Forbidden Forest must have some worse things in it than manticores."  
"Do you think maybe Ronan or Bane count as powerful and influential?" Ron asked.  
Hermione shook her head. "Influential, maybe, but certainly not powerful. Grawp, maybe?"  
"Not even slightly influential." Harry rejected. "Oh no. I know who it is."  
Ron snapped his fingers. "So do I."  
"Well, who, then?" Hermione demanded.  
"Aragog." Ron said grimly.  
"Yep." Harry said. "Listen up, corporal. Aragog is this absolutely massive spider, with hundreds of children, that is, the giant spiders we've seen patrolling around the school. It shouldn't be too hard to find him, you just follow the spiders. He's too old to move, but all his children are mindless thugs for him."  
"So to stop this Voldemort person and save England, I'm gonna have to break out of this school, get into the Forbidden Forest, find the biggest spider the world has ever seen, get through his bodyguard of dozens of huge spiders, and kill it. Then you lot are gonna have to wait for the fighting in the Hall to finish, walk in, and mop up?"  
"That sounds about right." Hermione concluded.  
"The main problem with this plan is that my men and I have almost no ammo, and our weapons aren't nearly big enough." Shepherd said. "Wait, what's that?"  
A glint of light in the corner caught his eye. It was the reflection off a ridiculously large mound of small arms, heavy arms, explosives, and ordinance. Shepherd's jaw hung lower than a playground swing. "Evidently while we were turning around outside the door, somebody was wishing we had more guns."  
"Not me." Sean piped up.  
"Nor me." Brian added.  
"Then it must have been colonel Black." Shepherd said indifferently. "Okay, men, load up with only the heaviest of weapons. We're gonna be killing things as big as small elephants. You, wizard-people, get near enough to the Hall that you can hear it if hundreds of magical creatures start killing each other. Possibly the fate of the world rests on our shoulders, gentlemen. Make your forefathers proud."  
Everybody prepared. All the soldiers took off their bergens, and any other equipment which wasn't absolutely necessary for the impending assault. Shepherd kept his M16/M203, and picked up several more magazines and 203 bombs. He also picked up seven 66 fire-and-forget rocket launchers, and a grenade belt, and took a sidearm Desert Eagle for good measure. Sean immediately dropped all of his Desert Eagles and picked up a box-fed M60 heavy machine-gun and three spare two-hundred-round boxes, plus several satchel explosives. Brian dropped his shotgun and sidearm and picked up a high-powered sniper rifle and a drum-loading grenade launcher, along with as much spare ammo for the both of them that he could carry, and a Colt .45 with several clips as a sidearm. Dean Thomas nipped over to the stack of guns & ammo and nicked an MP5 submachinegun and two thirty-round clips. He met Shepherd's stare.  
"Hey, I'm Muggle-born. I know what a gun is and how to use it, look." He set the safety-catch to full-auto and sprayed the entire clip up and down the walls. Then he reloaded efficiently and picked up another clip. "Childhood spent playing violent computer games, a kid gets to know how to use firearms." he explained to the shocked occupants of the room.  
The wizards then began preparing. Their preparation was merely a very quick revision session on Defence Against the Dark Arts.  
"Just like you did in the first year, Ron; if you want to levitate something, swish and flick, swish and flick." Harry told Ron. "And don't forget Hermione's pompous correction in Charms class the week before."  
"Win-GAR-dium, lev-i-O-saaaa!" Harry and Ron chorused, then laughed. Hermione's expression turned sour and she looked away.  
"Oh, come off it, Hermione, you're not that self-important brat on the train telling me I had dirt on my nose anymore!" Ron soothed unsoothingly. "We like you now!"  
"Hmph." Hermione responded; a thousand words couldn't have said more.  
"Don't you have more important things to worry about, kiddies?" Sean snarled, trying to fit all of his equipment onto his person in a way which wouldn't result in instant medical complications. In a few minutes everyone was ready to go. 


	8. Saved by the Boys in Black

The three soldiers bomb-burst out of the Room of Requirement. Straight off Brian fired a grenade at a mountain troll, blowing a great chunk out of its chest and knocking it dead to the floor. Sean put a long burst from his M60 into the troll's companion, who died almost instantly. The trio then hustled down the corridor towards the staircase. A platoon of orcs charged around the corner, and Sean and Shepherd massacred the lot of them before they could even think about throwing any axes. Shepherd hastily reloaded while still running. Brian saw several wolfmen approaching from behind and fired two grenades in fast succession. Though a couple of the wolfmen were fast enough to dodge the first grenade they didn't even see the second.  
Coming down the stairs, Shepherd saw two Death Eaters down the corridor coming off the bottom of the stairs. Shepherd hurled himself right, just dodging a killing curse and pushing Sean out of the way of a different killing curse. Brian then got onto the stairs and fired a grenade at the Death Eaters. It fell too short, but distracted them enough that they couldn't let off any more curses. Brian fired another grenade, this one landing smack on target between the two and blowing them into deli meat. A classroom door opened and Brian didn't even pause, he fired the sixth and last grenade from the drum at the door, instantly killing whoever or whatever was about to come through it. As he ejected the drum and picked up another one to load in, Shepherd and Sean got up and continued running. They saw a side exit of Hogwarts and sprinted for it.  
The door was ajar. They squeezed through it and found themselves on a set of five stairs leading down to a dirt path, on which ten centaurs sat. They nocked arrows and drew back the bowstrings, but were all killed before they could let the arrows fly due to how ridiculously well-armed Shepherd and his men were. The soldiers heard flapping from above and looked up. Although the sun blinded them slightly, they could make out that several harpies and a few griffins (or Hippogriffs) were descending on them. Brian brought up his sniper rifle and fired, managing to kill two of them with the same round. Sean and Shepherd let them have it with scores of rounds, punching them out of the sky to hit the earth with a splat, after which both had to reload their weapons.  
Suddenly they noticed two tanks approaching the main door of Hogwarts, with black-clad soldiers huddling near the tracks for some ballistic protection. There were also several helicopters in the distance, and some Land Rover transporting black-clad soldiers approaching Hogwarts on this side.  
Shepherd felt intensely grateful. Although legally he shouldn't have known who these people were, he did. They were Black Ops, a deniable militia doing the jobs that the US government wanted done but didn't want the rest of the world to know the US had done it. Once the Black Ops had been called in to solve a hostage situation Shepherd had been outside of. They showed no mercy. And they had been called in by a non-Imperius-cursed general to fight the creatures.  
Suddenly a Yeti bashed open the side door of Hogwarts with its fist. Howling, it advanced on Shepherd and his men. The minigun mounted on the back of the Land Rover roared to life, spraying countless rounds into the Yeti. The Yeti screamed a very loud cry and fell forwards, definitely dead.  
"Hey, thanks - "Shepherd began as he stood up, but then the minigun swivelled his way, still firing. He just barely ducked in time, and rolled behind two dead centaurs for cover. He looked around wildly to see the state of his other two men. Brian was hit.  
"What the fuck are you doing, you assholes?!" Shepherd screeched.  
"Get 'em, get 'em, get 'em!" one of the Black Ops shouted. The minigun, still spraying, stopped firing into Shepherd's cover and cut a swathe across the ground, over Brian's corpse and towards Sean, who also dived behind some dead centaurs.  
Almost too late Shepherd realised the Black Ops had also been ordered to kill soldiers. Their mission wasn't to help stop this conspiracy, it was to make the world forget this conspiracy. No witnesses, not even witnesses who think they're allied with you. Shepherd snapped the case off a 66, aimed underneath one of the centaur's legs at the lead Land Rover, and fired. The rocket whooshed as it came out of the tube and impacted the driver's side door, mangling the front half and killing everyone on the Land Rover. Sean also aimed from a place of similarly excellent cover and blazed away with his M60, massacring the Black Ops on the other Land Rover. The dead driver thankfully slumped forwards onto the brake pedal rather than the accelerator, leaving Shepherd and Sean a bullet-riddled though operational vehicle to take them to the Forest faster.  
But first Sean walked over to his now-dead friend and checked his pulse. It was a futile gesture; Brian had nearly been cut in half. But still Sean had held onto the weakest of convictions that Brian might have survived, right up until he felt the coldness of Brian's skin and saw the glassiness of his open eyes. "Fuck." he muttered. Meanwhile Shepherd had jogged over to the operational Land Rover and executed all the Black Ops who were still alive with his M16. He reloaded his M16, kicked out and dragged out most of the bodies, then restarted the stalled engine. Sean vaulted into the back and sat at the helm of the minigun.  
Shepherd drove as fast as he could directly towards the Forbidden Forest and as far away from the Black Ops tanks as possible. He thought he was home free to get to the Forest until he saw some of those Thestrals.  
"Sean! Thestrals!" he shouted over the noise of the engine.  
Sean recovered quickly from the shock of seeing Thestrals, then his training took over. He held down the trigger and put streams of near-molten metal at the incoming bloodthirsty Thestrals. He smashed their dead bodies into useless strips of invisible-to-most mummified sinew. "They're gone." he shouted back with satisfaction as he looked around the sky to make sure.  
Suddenly a tree was uprooted and hurled at them. Shepherd squealed the Land Rover around a square corner on two wheels to avoid it. He looked back. It appeared to be a giant coming out of the Forbidden Forest, mumbling crazily. Without hesitation Sean continued firing the minigun at it, and Shepherd took the casing off a 66. Shepherd opened the door and hopped out, and Sean grabbed his M60 and jumped out, just as the giant smashed its fist down onto the Land Rover, crushing it until it was only half a metre tall. It let out a bellow of rage that these small creatures evaded it. Shepherd aimed for the neck and fired. The rocket whined through the air and blew a great hole into the giant's throat. Gurgling in a revolting manner, it turned its attention to Shepherd as blood ran down its neck and chest. Shepherd ran away and the giant gave chase. But then Sean opened up with his M60 at the giant's left knee, and after some fifty rounds there was a crunch and a grating sound, then the giant fell facedown. It bellowed so loud it echoed. Shaken, Shepherd ran far around the giant and rejoined Sean.  
"That's good enough, the bastard won't be able to follow us into the Forest." Shepherd panted. "Let's go." The two ran into the Forest. 


	9. My Tieclip Says Thank You, Corporal

Of course, the Forbidden Forest is a big place, and since the vast majority of the creatures had left to assault the castle, it was desolate. Shepherd and Sean walked around inside it for a long while with no contacts at all. Then, finally, Shepherd noticed a couple of small spiders moving determinedly through the undergrowth. He signalled Sean to follow and stealthily they tracked the two little spiders. They followed for ten minutes. Then all of a sudden the situation changed from deathly boring to heart-poundingly real.  
Two giant spiders stepped out from behind some gnarled trees and made for the two soldiers very quickly. Just as quickly Shepherd fired a launch grenade into the maw of the left one and Sean shot two dozen rounds into the underbelly of the right one. More spiders appeared further along in the forest. Both ran towards the spiders, Sean busy emptying his M60 into a group of four while Shepherd took the case off another 66 and reloaded his M203. Shepherd saw a spider out of the corner of his eye and fired the rocket. It impacted a small tree trunk ten metres in front of the spider. Shepherd brought up his M16 and fired on full-auto at the same spider, using half the clip to kill it. He turned his attention behind and fired the rest of the clip at another giant spider, then fired a launch grenade at two spiders close together, killing them both. While he reloaded and prepared another 66, Sean slammed home his third two-hundred-round box, then they both continued firing at any spiders who came close. Running along, they both lost count of the spiders they left as quivering mounds of disgusting flesh and hair, but they did notice that the spiders were getting more numerous as they ran further into the forest. At last they came to him; Aragog. He was an incredibly ugly spider, and all of his hair had gone white. His voice was tremulous from age, but ruthless, as he said in a raspy voice, "Kill them."  
More giant spiders appeared from everywhere, and suddenly Aragog and the two soldiers were enclosed in a ring of spiders. Shepherd threw his M16/M203 over his back, snapped the cases off his last two 66s, and fired them each one-handedly at Aragog's ugly head. All eight of his eyes burst from the explosion, and he was killed so fast he didn't even give out a death cry.  
Suddenly something invisible in the air (the magic binding the creatures, no doubt) cracked, fractured and then shattered, dropping to the ground and disappearing instantly. There was a sudden hush over all the school grounds as all the creatures stood stock still. Then all the creatures moved faster than before and the noise intensified.  
Shepherd fired his last launch grenade and belted out an entire clip on full-auto, killing three spiders. He reloaded his last clip and snapped the safety-catch to three-round burst. Sean meanwhile expended his two- hundred-round box and slapped home the last one. They both looked at each other. It was standard that when one was down to their last clip, one was greatly outnumbered but one had completed one's mission, they ran like fuck. So they both charged towards a spider, mowed down it and the spider either side, so as to run through the circle and get away.  
Determined not to fire unless it would directly save their own lives, they both pelted away down the undergrowth. Being trained to run long distances with great weights on their backs, they really motored when all they had to carry was their primary weapon. But the spiders, grieving at their lost grandfather and leader, wanted revenge, and charged just as fast as the soldiers. The soldiers regulated their breathing and running to conserve oxygen as they sprinted. They could see light ahead! They ran all the faster. They had made it out of the Forest! They ran into the glorious sunshine, then turned around and looked back into the Forest. The spiders, in the dark of the Forest for so long that they could not take direct sunlight, could only stare menacingly. But then again, they did that all the time anyway.  
Shepherd looked up at the sky and bellowed in triumph. But as he did so he noticed two attack helicopters and a bubble helicopter approaching them. The attack helicopters hovered far enough away to be difficult targets but still make effective use of their rockets and machine-guns. The bubble helicopter, meanwhile, made a smooth landing on the ground near Sean and Shepherd. A pale politico dismounted from the chopper, smoothing the lapel of his suit. As he walked a little closer, the rotors of the bubble helicopter wound down, and the two attack helicopters waited patiently.  
"So." he said. "I understand you are corporal Shepherd?"  
"Yeah." Shepherd said defiantly.  
"Well, if you and your man would be good enough to drop your weapons, backup weapons and explosives, I'm sure my men in the choppers would be good enough to not open fire." he continued, without traces of recognisable emotion in his face.  
Shepherd considered it, then nodded. He dropped his assault rifle and Desert Eagle, and Sean dropped his M60 and satchel explosives.  
"I'm glad you are so cooperative, Mr. Shepherd. I must admit I somewhat admire you, adapting to the situation at hand and surviving against all odds. You remind me of... me, Mr. Shepherd."  
"You're damn right I should be admired." Shepherd stated. "I rebelled against the perverted orders from my superiors, and it was only because of this that I was then able to resolve the situation successfully and aid a national ally in a time of crisis. By exhibiting a lot of valour and skill, I might add."  
"Not to mention luck." the politico added, unabashed. "While you are indeed a credit to our great country, Shepherd, I'm sure you'll understand why we cannot allow you to mingle with the general population again. My employers believe you would be far too tempted to 'tell all', and that is simply something which cannot happen. The public does not know of the existence of magic and it must remain this way, which is why my employers want you out of the picture. But out of admiration for what you have done, succeeding in disposing of that madman Lord Voldemort where even the Black Ops failed, I have decided to instead detain you for a period of time in a place where you can do no harm - and no harm can come to you." Two female Black Ops soldiers, armed with silenced pistols, stepped off the bubble helicopter, each holding a steady aim on either Sean or Shepherd. "Just get on the helicopter and be prepared for a long ride." the politico concluded.  
Suddenly there was a bestial roar from the two attack helicopters. A pair of griffins had snuck up on them and punched through the windscreen with their talons, killing each of the pilots instantly. One of the griffins didn't escape from its spiralling helicopter fast enough and was chopped into fish food by the whirling rotors, but the other got away clean.  
Meanwhile Sean snatched up his M60 while the Black Ops were distracted, dove sideways to avoid their bullets, and shot both of them in midair. Then he stood up and pointed the heavy machine-gun at the bubble helicopter's pilot, as he was unsure whether or not the man was armed. Shepherd picked up his Desert Eagle quickly and aimed it at centre mass on the politico. Shepherd walked around behind him, kicked him in the back of the leg to bring him to his knees, and did a quick search of the man's pockets. He was unarmed. Sean ordered the helicopter pilot to come out of the helicopter and lie facedown on the ground. Then Sean and Shepherd switched hostages so Shepherd could search the helicopter pilot (Sean couldn't search him and hold him at gunpoint at the same time, his gun was far too long). Shepherd came up with a pistol behind the man's belt. He tossed it to Sean, who pocketed it. Shepherd retrieved his AR just as Harry Potter and his friends showed up on broomsticks.  
"Hey, Harry!" Shepherd greeted. "From what this asshole says, I'm guessing you succeeded in killing Lord Voldemort!"  
"Damn right." Harry said without much enthusiasm. "I got him. The wizarding world is at peace once more."  
"This prick wanted to deport me to somewhere 'where I could do no possible harm', probably some top-secret prison." Shepherd called, changing the subject upon seeing the look on Harry's face. "What should we do with him? This helicopter here is his only way out of here."  
"Kill him." Ron said indifferently. "Ungrateful bastard."  
"Ron!" Hermione cried, shocked. "Corporal, just leave him here. The wizarding authorities will pick him up, if the creatures don't get him first. You force the pilot to take you to some obscure country where you can disappear. I'm really sorry you can't go back to society now that you're a hero."  
"What are you sorry for?" Shepherd laughed. "It's not your fault. Hey, Harry, are you sure you're OK?"  
"What?" Harry asked. "Oh, yeah, great."  
"Well, I hope we see you again, but I doubt it." Shepherd called to the wizards and witches hovering in midair, as their griffin rejoined them. He gave the politico a good hard kick before getting on the helicopter, with the muzzle of the Desert Eagle pressed into the pilot's neck, and the rotors started turning.  
  
The end... 


End file.
